"Gnat's fierce desire to learn the true nature of life and love burns bright throughout this warm, suspenseful, over-the-top adventure that bubbles up with swamp wisdom. (Fiction. 9-12)"

Love conquers all in this post-Civil War Appalachian tall tale fueled by the supernatural energy of 12-year-old Gnat Stokes, who lives with her grandfather and who "ain't scairt of nothing," not even the evil swamp queen Zelda.
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"Facts about the war are interwoven and the often-fraught-with-peril journey concludes in a satisfying manner. (map, author's note, selected bibliography) (Fiction. 10-14)"

Twelve-year-old Anna and her nine-year-old brother Jed set off from their Pennsylvania farm in 1863 to find their soldier father, who has been wounded in the first Battle of Winchester, Virginia.
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"Pervaded by a sense of urgency and impending disaster, as the age-old cycle of revenge and hatred begins to replay along the Susquehanna River, this compelling novel flows ever faster to an inevitable, tragic conclusion. (bibliography) (Fiction. 10-14)"

Basing her dramatic first-person, present-tense narrative on historical accounts of a German-American girl who was an Indian captive for the nine years of the French and Indian War, Keehn has written a first novel that rivals Hudson's Sweetgrass (1989) in its compelling evocation of Native Americans in transition.
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